LIFE OF 
SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER 
CHAPTEE I 
EARLY DAYS 
A LIFE whose span is almost a century may well be witness 
of great changes : the ninety-four years of Sir Joseph Dalton 
Hooker's life are the more intensely interesting because he 
himself was one of the chief workers in bringing about such 
changes. Indeed, the century almost covered by his life saw 
a greater revolution than any of our era except, perhaps, that 
of the Kenaissance. Once more the civilised world was born 
anew : it was the century of the New Kenaissance. The 
revolution in thought was paralleled by a revolution in the 
means of civilised Hfe. The two influences united in effecting 
the most profound readjustments ahke in social values and 
in the outlook of the human mind. Power over nature 
transformed the way of life : the insight into nature which 
secured that power, equally freed inquiring minds from the 
barriers imposed by the established guides of thought, who 
only permitted nature to be interpreted through the perspective 
of creed. 
Against those barriers the flood of natural knowledge had 
been slowly piling itself up, only awaiting the hand that should 
open a channel and a fresh impulse and a common direction 
to these chained-up currents. Mechanical aids, such as the 
magnifying lens, had opened the way to new investigations 
of hfe since the seventeenth century. From the needs of 
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